With a long local history, labor unions still a presence

Monday

Sep 4, 2017 at 6:00 AM

In the late 19th century, granite workers and other unions dominated the South Shore's economy. Those days are gone, and these days there's more collaboration with developers.

QUINCY – Labor unions have been a fixture in Quincy since the late 19th century when thousands of granite cutters and polishers worked in the city’s principal industry, and the rank and file from a range of other trades joined them for Labor Day parades.

Outside the city, thousands of other labor unions worked at boot and shoe factories in Weymouth, Whitman, Brockton and other towns in Massachusetts, where most of the nation’s footwear was produced.

Barbers, paper hangers, boilermakers and other trades had their own locals. The granite workers’ national office was in Quincy.

Those days are long gone. From an all-time state peak in Massachusetts union membership in the 1950s, only 12 percent of the state’s 3.5 million workers belong to a labor union today. The percentage is slightly higher than the national share of 11 percent of 152 million U.S. workers. Half of the nation’s union members are public employees.

Even so, everyone from the president of the state AFL-CIO to the president of the South Shore Chamber of Commerce agrees that the labor movement left a set of enduring legacies and practices.

Massachusetts AFL-CIO president Steve Tolman ticks off a century-long list of achievements the labor movement has supported, from modern worker health and safety laws and unemployment insurance to federal minimum-wage increases and shorter work days.

“You know that bumper sticker?” he said. “That’s real.”

Tolman was referring to the slogan that shows up around Labor Day – “The labor movement. The folks who brought you the weekend” – a reference to the 40-hour, five-day work week.

South Shore Chamber of Commerce President-CEO Peter Forman is unlikely to join a union picket line, but he gives unions credit for establishing apprentice programs and for helping workers develop skills “so they can even start their own businesses.”

Forman said the Chamber doesn’t support the union practice of demanding a minimum share of work for large development projects, such as Union Point at the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station.

“Developers should have options,” he said. “There are a lot of hard-working people who aren’t in labor unions.”

But he said Union Point is a good example of how unions, developers and the Chamber often work together. He noted that unions and the Chamber both have seats on the Southfield Redevelopment Authority, the three-town board that oversees projects there.

“There is often the perception about business and unions being at odds,” Forman said. “But we find common interests around economic growth and things like job training.”

Tolman agreed. “It shouldn’t be us and them,” he said. “We should be in this together. Labor prides itself on delivering the best workers to the job.”

In Quincy, Mayor Thomas Koch’s spokesman Christopher Walker said unions are part of every city project.

Walker said the unions supply “80 to 90 percent” of the work crews for school projects like Sterling Middle. Commercial developments such as the West On Chestnut apartment building typically have a mix of union and non-union labor.

Labor-management relations haven’t always been so harmonious, especially in Quincy, where labor activity has been punctuated by lockouts, sit-down strikes and walk-offs.

In May 1892, amid a nationwide Knights of Labor strike by granite workers, Quincy’s unions, earning roughly $3 a day, asked for an 8-hour work day more say in the hiring and use of apprentices. Quarry owners locked out the granite cutters and polishers and threatened to hire non-union workers.

Quincy’s mayor tried to mediate the conflict with no success. In August, the city grocers association said it wouldn’t offer any more store credit to locked-out workers. In September – four months after the lockout – owners agreed to an 8-hour day.

A 20th century campaign to organize Fore River shipyard workers lasted years longer.

In his 1998 book “Organizing The Shipyards 1933-1945,” political science professor David Palmer said Fore River owner Bethlehem Steel was “a formidable opponent” for the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, which tried for two decades to organize the yard’s machinists, pipefitters and other tradesmen.

A relatively progressive “company union” made recruiting difficult. The Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America local had a fraction of the work force – less than 12 percent in the fall of 1941, when there were 17,000 workers.

By 1943, the shipyard had 31,000 employees, the most ever. But the industrial union didn’t make significant gains until the fall of 1944, amid reports of the independent union’s inaction on pay and vacation time.

The reports inspired a three-day walk-off by 7,000 workers, one third of the total. It was Fore River’s largest strike since the end of World War I. The industrial union finally won a vote to represent the shipyard in July 1945, a month before the atomic bombing of Japan ended World War II.

The fruits of the union victory soon withered, though, when the end of Navy contracts led to large layoffs. Bethlehem Steel later sold the yard to General Dynamics, but pipefitters and other locals continued to be a presence until Fore River’s last ship was launched in 1986 – the Navy cargo vessel USS Sgt. William R. Button.

Local unions still stage actions from time to time. In 2013, nurses held a one-day strike at the then-operating Quincy Medical Center, to protest layoffs.

In 2016, thousands of United Food and Commercial Workers voted to strike if the union failed to agree to a new contract with the Stop and Shop chain. The union and company did reach an agreement and the strike was called off.

Unions are an institutional presence in Quincy as well. The national office of the Service Employees International Union is in the city, as is the South Shore Building Trades Council.

The South Shore’s latest organizing win came in November 2016, when some Plimoth Plantation employees voted to join the Society of Allied Museum Professionals, a United Auto Workers affiliate. Union members include the Pilgrim and Wampanoag re-enactors who greet and talk to visitors.

The Pilgrim village replica is a very different scene from Quincy’s long-closed granite quarries, where unionized granite workers were locked out for four months in 1892. But the AFL-CIO’s Steve Tolman said the inspirations were much the same both places, even though the actions were 125 years apart.

“We will celebrate our victories and prepare for new challenges,” he said.